


Marionettes, Inc

by julad



Category: Smallville
Genre: Bradbury Title Challenge, M/M, mprov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 07:33:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1104133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julad/pseuds/julad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lex sometimes wondered if everybody could hear his skeleton click-clacking as he moved.  To his own ears, he sounded like pieces of wood rattling against each other; dry, hollow sounds orchestrated by all the strings attached to him. A symphony of dead, polished timber and the wind that howled through it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marionettes, Inc

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Smallville Bradbury Title Challenge. [Originally posted June 2002](http://julad.livejournal.com/27618.html) to LiveJournal.

_Stand absolved behind your electric chair, dancing  
Past the sound within the sound   
Past the voice within the voice_

Jeff Buckley-- New Year's Prayer

 

Lex sometimes wondered if everybody could hear his skeleton click-clacking as he moved. To his own ears, he sounded like pieces of wood rattling against each other; dry, hollow sounds orchestrated by all the strings attached to him. A symphony of dead, polished timber and the wind that howled through it.

Clark sometimes wondered if he could speed up time by stopping altogether; if relativity as it applied to running really fast could also apply to hiding in the barn until his life was over. He studied his physics textbook until he understood equal and opposite reactions, and then sat in the barn thinking about the meteor rocks seeding the town with death and madness, and resolved never to move again. Then, always, his father would knock on the railing and call for help with the harvester, or Chloe would be on the phone. No matter how still he sat, time advanced on him, propelled him out into the day, the night, the town, the life he led.

Lex sometimes wondered where, in all his clicking, clacking pieces, he would find a piece that was warm, moist, that could harbour a pulse or move of its own volition. He wondered where the wondering was placed; what particular part of his dispossessed body he was haunting. He felt it, sometimes, in his left hand as held a foil, facing an opponent already off-balance by his backwards stance, but that was the hand that felt numb when it signed a paper or lifted a champagne flute in toast.

Clark sometimes wondered if it was his mind was as alien as his body. He felt normal, sometimes; a regular guy trapped in a foreign skin which didn't react to the world in any of the ways it was supposed to. That was his "I'm human" feeling. He felt normal sometimes, in a body that belonged to him; enjoying the slight pressure of a tractor engine resting on his palm, the resistance of the wind in a run to the Kansas border and back, the ticklish warmth of fire against his skin. When his body was energised, enervated, exercised, that was his "I'm whole" feeling.

He jerked off in the loft to thoughts of Lana, moving fast, pushing his body to its limits, shuddered with guilt and shivered with pleasure. When he came, he felt briefly human and united. He wondered if he could ever feel like that with a human. He wondered if jerking off was a violation of his vow to keep perfectly still all morning, but then his mother called out for him to start his deliveries, and motion was inevitable.

Lex wondered, sometimes, who Clark was, under the flawless skin and liquid eyes. Not a mutant, he was sure, although he wasn't sure where the part of him was that knew that. There was just a tone, a minor variation on a major key, a quality to the wind as it blew through his carved joints when Clark was around, which sang of something less and something more. There was a sense of himself as something motionless, a harp on a hill that sounded when Clark breezed gently past him. The sound was almost warm, almost moist. He could almost feel where he was, when he felt his bones vibrating with it, but could never feel the muscles which would move his limbs in pursuit of the breeze.

Clark sometimes wondered if Lex knew all the secrets to the universe. Lex stood in the barn, with the stillness which said he could stand there forever, and raised his eyes to the sky.

"If you stand still long enough," he said, "you can see them moving."

"They're always moving," Clark replied.

"Depends on your point of view," Lex said, and smiled.

Clark wondered about that, about time and space and orbits and gravity, and where in the universe his point of view really *was*. As he stands, and thinks, the stars wheel more quickly across the sky. Lex is motionless, but far from lifeless; subtract his fevered motion and he hums softly with patience and peace.

A phone rings; Lex leaves his eyes in the sky as he answers it. "Sure," he says. "Of course. Yes. I'm sure you will be." Clark tightens his grip on the windowframe and the stars slow to stationary. "Clark, I'm sorry. I need to go."

"Sure," Clark says, and walks him down to his car, stands there and watches the dust settle in the night.

"Clark!" his mother calls, through the kitchen window. "Bed."

Lex wonders if he'll ever be able to move of his own volition.

Clark wonders if he'll ever be allowed to stay still.


End file.
